Supervisor Bevan Dufty authored city legislation for the project in 2010, although most of the details, including design and scope, had yet to be worked out. Lindenauer coined Rainbow Honor Walk and used a mockup showing the name surrounded by rainbow motif mosaic tiles. Separately in 2009, Isak Lindenauer, a poet, writer, Castro business-owner and resident since the 1980s, had a similar vision then-city Supervisor Bevan Dufty connected the two, so they joined efforts. Because of the more urgent needs related to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in San Francisco, the project and its fundraising goals were put on hold. The CBD would later serve as the fiscal sponsor until the RHW was an independent charity. In 1994, Perry proposed the LGBTQ walk of fame to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and LGBTQ community leaders including the Castro Business District (CBD). Gayle Rubin, a "scholar of San Francisco LGBTQ history and professor of anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan" stated, "Marginal groups and those who are disrespected for various reasons tend to not have their accomplishments recognized in public landmarks." The RHW could eventually include 500 honorees. Perry envisioned a Hollywood Walk of Fame but for LGBTQ people to reach future generations. The Bay Area Reporter noted five of the inaugural twenty: Keith Haring, activist George Choy, Sylvester, Randy Shilts, and Tom Waddell all died from AIDS. And I was thinking: What happens if there's no one here to tell our story? We need to memorialize our history, because if we don't, nobody else will. "I was very cognizant of the fact we were losing a generation of people.
The neighborhood was one of the country's epicenters during the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic before the AIDS cocktail in the 1990s and during the city's response to slow the impact on the gay male community. In the late 1980s David Perry, "whose public relations firm has handled everything from the Olympic Torch Relay in 2008 and the 2016 Super Bowl 50 Committee," and a gay man, had an epiphany while walking past the Castro Theater in San Francisco's Castro district, the cultural center of the city's LGBTQ communities for decades and his home since 1986.
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The first round of twenty plaques was installed in 2014, a second round of twenty-four was completed in 2019.Ī separate sidewalk installation, the Castro Street History Walk, is a series of twenty historical fact plaques about the neighborhood-ten from pre-1776 to the 1960s before the Castro became known as a gay neighborhood, and ten "significant events associated with the queer community in the Castro"-contained within the 400 and 500 blocks of the street between 19th and Market streets. The RHW eventually could number up to 500 honorees. The sidewalk installations are planned to extend from the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy at 19th Street & Collingwood, to proceed along Castro Street to its intersection with Market Street, and follow Market to the San Francisco LGBTQ Community Center at Octavia Boulevard additionally the Walk will branch out in both directions at 18th Street and Castro. The project was founded by David Perry to honor LGBTQ pioneers, who are considered to have laid the groundwork for LGBTQ rights, and to teach future generations about them. The plaques mark a walk located within the business district of the Castro neighborhood, which for decades has been the city's center of LGBTQ activism and culture. The Rainbow Honor Walk (RHW) is a walk of fame installation in San Francisco, California to honor notable lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer ( LGBTQ) individuals from around the world "who left a lasting mark on society." Its bronze plaques honor LGBTQ individuals who "made significant contributions in their fields".